TJ Otzelberger's powerful season take after Iowa State basketball NCAA Tournament exit
03/24/2025 09:19 AM
The Iowa State basketball team’s March Madness run is over. The No. 3 Cyclones were bested by No. 6 Ole Miss on Sunday night, as head coach TJ Otzelberger’s squad couldn’t erase a 40-29 halftime deficit in the second round of the NCAA Tournament.
Iowa State finished the regular season at 25-10 and fifth in the Big 12. Despite falling to BYU in the conference tournament quarterfinal, the committee viewed Iowa State as one of the field’s strongest teams.
Otzelberger reflected on everything he took from the 2024-25 campaign, via CBS Sports College Basketball.
“For our team this year to start the season with the expectations and the ranking that we had all year long,” Otzelberger said. “There was a higher magnitude with every game that we played. Certainly disappointment wanting to fulfill, and live up to those. The competitors that we all are every single day. I look at the entire season and say, you start the year preseason six, you win 25 games, you finish in the top five in the league. There’s a lot of great things our guys accomplished. At the end being a top-three seed, we wanted to go on a run, we wanted to be at full strength. But what happens through the course of the season for a lot of teams.. Injuries happen, things that can disrupt happen, and what you need to be able to do is move forward.”
“Our guys didn’t stop fighting and I’m proud of them for that.”
Iowa State entered the NCAA Tournament without its second leading scorer in Keshon Gilbert, as the senior guard suffered a lower body injury on March 12, and it appeared that the Cyclones – as a whole – couldn’t ever fully recover.
Iowa State basketball’s success despite curtailed NCAA Tournament run
While Iowa State didn’t wind up making the March Madness run that many had initially predicted, Otzelberger saw nothing but success out of the program this year.
“When you win 25 games and you play in the Big 12, which is one of the best leagues in America, you win 13 league games, there’s a lot of great things that happen,” Otzelberger said. “Even though we had high hopes and goals to make a run in this tournament, it doesn’t diminish the things that the young men in our program accomplished throughout the course of this season.”
Otzelberger and Iowa State will continue to have one of the Big 12’s toughest teams next season, with the group that is expected to be back.
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